With a Big Ten regular season championship just one win away, nobody was going to stop Frank Kaminsky and No. 5 Wisconsin on Senior Day.
Like the Badgers, Michigan State came to the Kohl Center Sunday looking to bounce-back after a loss, but behind a season-high 31 points from Kaminsky, Wisconsin defeated the Spartans 68-61 to win its first Big Ten regular season championship since 2008.
Kaminsky was 11 of 17 (64.7 percent) overall from the field, 3-for-4 from three-point range and 6-for-8 from the free throw line for the game. The seven-footer added eight rebounds, three assists, three blocks and two steals in his final game at the Kohl Center.
“It’s my last game here and I wanted to do something special,” Kaminsky said of his Senior Day performance. “To go out on Senior Day and win a Big Ten title is unbelievable.”
Wisconsin head coach Bo Ryan saw Kaminsky’s performance in him before the senior even took the court at the Kohl Center for the final time.
“He was ready to play. He was not going to be denied,” Ryan said of Kaminsky.
Wisconsin (26-3, 14-2 Big Ten) opened up the game in the second half, going on an 11-0 run to push its lead to 47-25. The 22-point lead was the largest of the game for Wisconsin. Senior Josh Gasser had five straight points in that stretch including two free throws after Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo was given a technical foul, followed by Gasser’s lone three-pointer of the game.
The Badgers continued to get the ball inside in the second half, outscoring the Spartans 34-22 overall in the paint Sunday. It was something that UW wanted to do after settling for outside shots against Maryland Tuesday.
“We knew they were a physical team so we had to get something going inside,” Kaminsky said. “Against Maryland we settled for a lot of shots and we didn’t want that to happen again.
“So we just tried to get that going from the start of the game and it helped us push the lead out and we never looked back.”
The Spartans (19-10, 10-6 Big Ten) kept threatening to cut into the Badger lead after that, but only closed within 10 points with 18 seconds left in the game. By that time, Wisconsin had all but wrapped up a share of the Big Ten regular season championship and a bounce-back win after the loss to Maryland Tuesday night.
Wisconsin came into Sunday’s game struggling on offense, shooting above 50 percent as a team only once in its last six games. However, the Badgers found their shot against the Spartans, shooting 52 percent (26 of 50) overall and 43.5 percent (10 of 23) from three. UW was also 12-for-15 from the free-throw line.
Along with Kaminsky, Gasser was playing his final game in Madison and finished with nine points on 2-for-4 shooting while going 4-for-4 from the free throw line. He is one of two players (Michael Finley) in Wisconsin history to have 1,000 points, 500 rebounds and 250 assists for his career.
Entering his fifth season as a Badger, Sunday’s game was one that Gasser had been looking forward to for a long time.
“When the schedule came out, first time I looked at it, I had this day circled because I envisioned this exact scenario happening – Senior Night, last home game, against a really good team closing out the Big Ten,” Gasser said. “I didn’t know for sure if [winning a Big Ten title] was going to happen. It looked a little rough at times especially when [senior Traevon Jackson] went down, but we were able to stick together as a team.”
Senior forward Duje Dukan did not score in ten minutes of action Sunday, but did grab three rebounds. Senior guard Traevon Jackson, who said he was going to play Sunday, was not cleared to play and did not take the court.
With Jackson currently injured, and Gasser and Dukan going through injuries of their own in their careers at UW, Sunday was a fitting end to a group of seniors that had battled through so much.
“A book could be written about the four of them,” Ryan said of the seniors. “And not that the other guys in the past it wasn’t the same, but you just think of the experiences these guys have had and what some of them have been through and how they’re battling things right now, I couldn’t be prouder of a group of seniors than this group.”
In the first half, Kaminsky and sophomore forward Nigel Hayes dominated Michigan State, scoring 28 of Wisconsin’s 36 first half points and the first 19 points of the game for the Badgers.
Wisconsin opened up the game with an 8-2 lead before Michigan State responded with a 9-2 run of its own to pull ahead 11-10. The run was capped by three-straight 3-pointers from the Spartans’ Bryn Forbes and Travis Trice.
But the Badgers kept attacking inside and finished the half on a 26-14 run behind Kaminsky, who finished the half with 18 points on 7 of 9 shooting as they entered halftime with a 36-25 lead. Hayes had 10 points in the half, going 5-for-6 from the floor and finished the game with 14 points on 6-for-9 shooting.
Forbes led the Spartans with 11 first half points and led the team with 21 points overall. Trice (16) and Denzel Valentine (10) were the other Spartans in double-figures Sunday.
Wisconsin was 16-for-27 (59.3 percent) in the first half, controlling the points in the paint with a 24-6 advantage over Michigan State. The Spartans were 10-for-24 (41.7 percent) from the floor in the opening half of play.
The Badgers will now seek the outright Big Ten regular season title and the number one seed in the Big Ten tournament, which they can achieve with a win in either of their final two regular season games.
This season’s Big Ten championship is the fourth under Ryan (’02, ’03, ’08) and the 18th in program history.
Wisconsin returns to the court Thursday when they travel to Minnesota before closing out the regular season at Ohio State Sunday.
The Badgers and Gophers will tip off at 6 p.m. Thursday night from Minnesota.
